…Year 25.

Joel Parker of the Nations Foundation and Drew Konzelman arrived home late last night from Port Au-Prince Haiti.  They flew out of Seatac at midnight on Friday night.  After three connections and one seven-hour layover, they arrived in Santo Domingo with a box of tents, some medical supplies, and tired but eager spirits.  The team that was headed into Haiti consisted of 11 people, 5 of whom call the USA home, and the rest from the DR.  They were on the ground for three days in and around the port setting up medical clinics, tarps, tents, and making connections with areas outside of PAP that will be the targets of upcoming relief trips. Drew writes of their experience.

Into Haiti:

Quickly we packed bags, and strapped boxes and cases of medical supplies onto the truck. There was very little room for the eight people in the bed of the truck to sit down.Two people had to stand for the entire 8-hour drive into Haiti.

6 hours into the windy, cold, and bumpy ride we watched the sun start to rise on the horizon. At this point we’d not slept in nearly 50 hours, and eagerly awaited the warmth and energy the sunlight would bring. Anticipation gnawed on our minds as we drew close to what could easily be considered the most unstable place on earth.

We chose to travel through a border-crossing just past Jumani that was said to be open. This was the entry for Doctor Klein and his team during his first trip into the port. Confidence often goes un-questioned, and though risky, the driver thought it better not to stop the truck, and so we drove past armed guards and two sets of guarded gates into Haiti. The worst we got were questioning looks by the guards as our truck bounced across the border.

Another 3 hours of driving put the sun in a place that it began to warm our chilled minds and bodies. We had made it to the outlying areas of the port. Already we could see the quake’s effect on the structures along the road.

As the traffic slowed we began to see how large relief organizations might struggle in this already overcrowded environment. We drove past a massive camp compound set up by the United Nations. From the ground outside we saw the flags of various countries represented in the camp. Helicopters frequented the airspace, and airplanes landed every four or five minutes in the adjacent airfield. Every person we saw carried a large assault rifle or grenade launcher.

Day One:

We took the most direct route to where we would set up the first clinic. Skirting most of the downtown area, we drove through busy streets. Piles of rubbish burned in the streets, their smokey tinge mixing with the dusty smell of death. The odor hung heavy over the city. It seemed like every other 3 or 4-story building had either collapsed or was irreparably damaged. Most of the Hatians we drove past screamed for water, food or shelter. They made hand signals, visually displaying their needs to the white Americans on the back of our truck.

Another 20 minutes put us at the gate to the first compound.The compound had 14 foot tall walls that somehow survived the quake and subsequent tremors. We were greeted by a group of 6 Haitian men, one of whom aggressively yelled through bullhorn at the hungry onlookers. The truck came to a stop and our day on the ground began. We were some 50 plus hours into a journey that seemed to lead us to the heart of hell on earth.

Within the hour, we set up a basic tarp shelter for the medical clinic while Gary and Christy made preparations to begin treating the ill and injured, which began with the youngest members of the camp. Joel and I quickly realized that our role as videographers was secondary to our team’s primary goal of bringing shelter and sanitation to the most needy. Most of that day we hung tarps for shade, sneaking off to eat and drink the minimal supplies we’d brought. It was a long hot day, and in the fleeting light Joel and I set up our own tent to sleep in. We chose to be a safe distance from any building whose motivation to stand might be altered in the night by an aftershock, the force of which we’d witnessed already.

We fell asleep to the sound of babies crying and people singing to the irregular beat of a drum kit that miraculously survived the quake. It was 70 hours since our last sleep.

(i’ve never been as fatigued yet eager to act at the same time. solemly excited.)

Day Two:

We woke to the sounds of commotion. Breakfast consisted of two bottles of water and some sort of energy bar. We loaded the truck, leaving nothing behind and drove to the site of our second medical clinic at a compound a mere two blocks away.

Gary, Joel, and I headed out across the river for a tour of the slums. As we walked down the side of the canyon into the riverbed our feet were upon massive piles of garbage. The locals use the sides of the canyon as the local refuse dump. Much of this garbage made its way into the riverbed where we watched families bathe and fill water bottles with the obviously contaminated water. Pigs and dogs picked through the rubbish in search of food.

We walked through bizarre alleys trying to make sense of the new areas we were entering. The disorganization of streets and alleys made navigation incredibly difficult and we found ourselves wandering through areas that were certainly less than safe and positively not secure. We entered a gate that opened into a series of almost overlapping houses.

A young man greeted us who quickly made the needs of their small community known. We learned that we had stumbled into a community called Jerusalem that contained 200 families. The concentration of people in these slum areas was astounding. We quickly learned that we were the very first relief of any kind that these communities had seen. We found ourselves contemplating the effectiveness of the hundreds of relief agencies and millions of dollars that had been mobilized when just a five minute walk from downtown put us in areas that had yet to see any help. The young man raised his arm to point at the mercy ships in the harbor, which were clearly visible from our vantage. He asked us in desperation why they had not been helped. All we could do was shake our heads and wonder the very same thing.

Upon returning to the compound we found that the people staying there were much more demanding and aggressive than at the first. At one point, a man named Markus approached us saying that he wanted a tent. We stated that the tents were specifically for women with infants and small children. He told us he was a convicted murderer, one of 4000 prisoners freed from a maximum security prison. Again, he requested a tent.

Tears welled up in Gary’s eyes as he clenched his fists with a firm resolve “Markus, I cannot give you a tent, tents are for women and children only.”

What our team shared with Markus in this moment was frustration. Frustration bred by dire circumstances. Markus left without a tent and we moved on.

After working all day to heal the sick and provide shelter for the weary, we left the camp to the sound of ungrateful booing. We simply did not have enough supplies for all of their needs. We did not have enough tents. We did not have enough medicine. We did not have enough water.

We spent our last evening watching the sun set through a smokey haze, as fires burned endlessly in the city. The columns of smoke billowed in two different colors. Brown smoke meant that trash was being burned. Black smoke meant that fuel had been used to burn bodies.

Once again we slept in our tent not inches from the ground, waking three different times in the night as the earth gave way to violent tremors. We kept our knives close at hand, should a quick escape from the tent be necessary.

Day Three:

Joel and I chose to place our tent outside the main yard, closer to the trucks. We slept uneasily on the cobblestone, waking every few hours to the sound of a baby crying or a tremor that shook us into a dazed fear.

The plan for the day was to head out of camp and visit the main hospital, which had been haphazardly set up in the heart of Port Au Prince. Gary wanted to see what improvements had been made since his first visit just two days after the quake. At rough estimate, 80 percent of the patients at the hospital were laying on beds in tents and under tarps. These were the lucky ones who had survived the amputations and rampant spread of gangrene that had already been claiming lives by the thousands.

The truck did several loops through the heart of the city. Each loop seemed to compile the devastation to the point where we were unable to process the sights and sounds. The smell of death burned our nostrils. During a brief stop our truck was nearly struck by a falling set of power lines. We sped out from under it as it fell where we had been parked seconds before.

The people who were still in the downtown area seemed to be in a shock-like state of apathy. They stumbled over the piles of rubble with no means of restoration. With no means of hope. The news said that some 70,000 bodies had been trucked out of the downtown area to be buried in mass graves north of the city. Many of the men and women we saw milling around in the streets had been the ones to load the trucks with the dead. What dead we no longer saw in the streets, we saw in the dark eyes and blank stares of a generation now attune to the reality of loss.

Our trip out of Port Au Prince was a slow one, through the polluted air and packed streets. We all were exhausted now. Our minds and camera memory cards full of memories that will be impossible to forget. We were leaving a war zone not caused by a war and yet a war had begun. A war for Hope. A war for Life.

During the last hour of our drive out of Haiti a gentle rain began to fall. At first we huddled for shelter, under bags of empty crates, but soon we realized it was futile. We sat, soaked to the bone, driving the last few miles of bumpy dirt roads to the Klein’s mission.

I could not wait to get home and tell people what I had seen.  I knew that my words would not do the situation justice.  I felt like the whole direction of my life had been drastically altered. I realized in that moment that excess had been my vice, and that love had begun to set me free.  All I wanted to do was bring a million tents and a thousand doctors back to Haiti.